


Royalty

by Hokuto



Category: Revolutionary Girl Utena (anime)
Genre: Abusive Relationship, Character of Color, Disturbing, Dubious Consent, Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Femslash, If you only read one work by me, Incest, Multi, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 18:23:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The gradual transformation of princes and princesses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Royalty

**Author's Note:**

> This is a speech-reader-friendly (or trying to be) version of a fic on which I went absolutely wild with coding. The original version, which I highly recommend if you're able to read it, can be found at the following link: [link leading to Livejournal post](http://brief-transit.livejournal.com/65559.html). If you have any suggestions on how to make the coding in this version more accessible, please let me know!

"Hey, so... after all that, what do you think about princes and princesses now?"

-(prince)-

A long, long time ago there lived a brave and beautiful prince loved by all who knew him. His gallant nature would never allow him to leave a princess in distress or a monster undefeated, no matter how difficult the distress or fiendish the monster. Truly, he was the strongest and bravest prince there ever was.

But even the strongest prince sometimes grows tired, and our prince, weary from many battles and dangers, fell ill with a sickness no one could cure. All the most famous healers and priests and wise men from across the land came to treat him as the princesses fluttered around outside his room, but their knowledge did no good, for his illness was of such a particular sort that only one person could cure him...

  
He couldn't think, even with the fever gone. She wasn't there and he couldn't think. Where had she why had she where why where, prickly as the dusty straw, and outside he could hear them begging still, a sound as eternal and impersonal as the crashing of waves. He pushed himself up on shaking arms and legs, leaving himself behind on the stable floor, unnoticed; he staggered to the door. He had to struggle to push the stained and impossibly heavy thing open, its surface swollen with splinters like a thousand dagger-points that cut his blistered hands.

Sunlight smote his eyes and forced them half-closed, the crowd's voices surging against his ears and breaking into silence at the only sound he could hear, the little pained sound of someone in distress. He turned as the stable door swung shut again and the swords jangled against each other and she, hanging from them, smiled through iron blood and said, "Brother..."

In her dull green eyes he saw a stranger reflected.

 

-(princess)-

Once upon a time there was a little girl who asked her brother,

"What's a princess?"

Warm lips, rose-pink or ruby-red or ruddy peach, lightly parted for a kiss.

"A princess,"said her brother, "is a good girl who does just what she's told and always behaves."

"I've been very good," the little girl said as she set her pet snails free in their natural habitat, the garden. "So can I be your princess?"

The prince hesitated.

"No," he said at last, "you can't be my princess. But you can be my sister," he said, kneeling down  
to kiss her cheek, "and that's even more special."

And the little girl would have been very happy, but then some men came and begged her brother to come to the aid of their young lady cousins who had been captured by a rakshasa, and so he had to go away for the third time that day.

-(prince)-

For a while he tried to go on as if nothing had changed, and in some ways nothing had. They still needed him, the princesses; they didn't seem to care that he was taller, or that his voice had deepened, or that his face had grown longer and less soft. He continued to fight their lions, escort them across busy streets, battle their demons and help them choose the most flattering clothes, and they never noticed that when he held them close for a good-night kiss he had no heart. Perhaps they mistook for a heartbeat the dull thuds of their blades striking home in Anthy as she hung quivering behind him, the thickly clotted sound echoing in his hollow body.

"My prince, how can I ever thank you?"

_Ka-thungk._

"How kind of you, my prince..."

_Ka-thungk._

"I am forever grateful to you, my prince!"

_Ka-thungk._

"Just one little kiss, my prince..."

_Ka-thungk._

My prince my prince my my prince my prince prince prince myprinceprinceprinceprincemymymymymy  
ka-thungkka-thungkka-thungkka-thungkka-thungkka-thungkka-thungkka-thungkka-thungk

  
He felt wrong. No joy filled him at the sight of a girl's smile or the touch of a woman's hand, or not the same easy uncomplicated joy that had once driven him, but some other, lower thing. A kiss had once been enough; no longer, but he didn't know what more would suffice.

It was really Anthy's fault, he supposed, whatever good she had meant by it; she was a girl after all, and she had only wanted her time with the prince. He could blame no one but himself that he was the only prince she knew.

He turned around and reached through the swords to take her pierced hands. "I'll make you a princess," he said. "I'll make you into a princess and then your own prince will come. I can't be your prince, but there will be others..."

"I can't be a princess," she said with a faint smile. "I did a terrible thing and princesses must be good girls. I can only be a witch."

"Even so," he swore, "even so, I will make you a princess."

_Do you even know how to do that, brother?_

ka-thungk

-(princess)-

Once upon a time a little girl asked her brother,

"What's a princess, really?"

The red blush against pale skin.  
The warm flush within brown skin.

"A princess," said her brother the prince, "is a lovely young woman who must live in a tower  
from which her prince may rescue her, or a garden that is worthy of her beauty."

"Our home has a tower and a garden," the girl said, though she had not seen home, tower, or garden in months.

"Yes, well," the prince said, "obviously you will meet your prince someday,  
but you still cannot be _my_ princess."

Sometimes the little girl thought her brother was very silly.

-(prince)-

Akio didn't know how to make a princess; he was used to them simply being, like stars or grass or the sky. But they were so numerous, it couldn't be a difficult process at all.

He redoubled his old efforts to please them, reasoning that the closer he became to the princesses of the world, the better he would know them and the swifter he would learn the way to give their gift to his sister. Yet the nearer he drew, the more they repelled him. It was no fault of their own, he knew; they couldn't help their natures, and he had loved them before. Now they disgusted him: fluttering sleeves and eyelashes, coy glances, soft breathy voices, fragile wrists, it all made him sick to his hollow guts.

Akio realized that he hated them. Every one, without exception, pretty or plain, thin or fat, smooth-skinned or spotty or covered in warts (but every princess is beautiful to a prince). Let the toothéd beasts devour them, let harsh men ravish them, let their beauty flutter and die in the world; so he felt as he kissed their hands and gave them roses to remember him by. He wanted to ravage them himself - even he, their only defender! - wanted to tear them open and take them and leave them unable to walk or to dance after him with their endless, _incessant_ **needs**.

Of course he couldn't; at his lightest touch they would unfold themselves for him, and he could only be gentle. But he _wanted_ to be cruel.

"The stars are so lovely tonight," a princess sighed, fanning herself. "What a wonderful idea you had, my darling prince, to enjoy the evening outside..."

_ka-thungk_

He hated the stars.

He clung to Anthy and she stroked his head, humming nonsense. "I can't do this to you," he said, "not like - you won't be like them, will you? No," his voice strengthening again, "you could never be like them. You will be more beautiful, more delicate, you will never ask for anything - your prince will know before you can say a word!"

"Yes, brother."

He got up and paced around their couch. "I will make a garden for you," he said, "a garden to hide you away, and a castle in the sky to keep you safe to wait for your prince. It is the only way to save you."

"But that will make you a monster," said Anthy, soft and serene.

"I am a monster already," he roared, his hair flowing wild around his face as if he were dancing a tandava, "a tiger wearing the prince's clothes, because you hid me away and I have died - I hate what I once loved, and I love nothing..."

"Except your sister," she said.

"Yes, of course," said Akio, and rested his head in her lap again. "Oh, Anthy - I will build you such a castle to be a princess in..."

_Is that really a good idea, brother?_

ka-thungk

-(princess)-

Once upon a long time ago a girl asked her brother,

"But what really makes a princess?"

  
Elegant gowns, kimono, saris, strings of beads, teasing the sight with slender necks and round breasts   
and perfect legs prepared to part.   


The prince sighed at her question, and said,

"A princess is a lady for whom princes must fight, for her honor or her favors."

The girl looked down at her bare feet and said, practically,

"No one will ever fight for me."

"No, no," the prince said, "one day you'll definitely have a prince of your own  
who will fight for you, even though I can't."

The girl didn't say,

_But if my brother won't fight for me..._

-(prince)-

Anthy had locked him away once and now he locked himself away, burying himself in piles of architectural designs and dress patterns. This would work, he told himself, it was foolproof; the equations were clean and neat and indisputable.

girl(tower + monster) + [girl(good) - girl(bad)]/2p = princess

He and Anthy laid the foundation stone together and watched the tower rise into the sky, but even as he worked he had no peace. Women always knew where Akio was, as if they could taste him in the air and followed that taste to his lair that he might prey upon them as they wished. Girls always knew what he had been: their protecter, their charmer, their perfect shining knightly prince, and when they looked past the rage in his face and his hands clenching on the backs of their chairs they saw Dios shining back at them, unreachable as the stars.

Well, they knew what he had been, but he knew what they still were, and so he teased them and toyed with them and played his part and, dazzled by the light of the star that was only the reflection of a sleeping sun, they never heard the contempt that thickened his voice.

Anthy sewed her own dress as he lay on the couch next to her; even the occasional prick of the needle was a bloody reminder. "I can do this," he said softly. "The tower and the arena, they're almost done. Princes will come from across the world to fight for your hand in marriage, to rescue you. I will look for them and bring them myself, the finest princes in the lands, all willing to die for your sake..." His hands tangled in her hair and he pulled her towards him, away from the needle and swords. "Really, Anthy, you should learn to put your hair up properly, you'll end up sewing it into the dress."

"Of course, brother."

Until then he still had to be the prince, the only prince for each of a thousand thousand girls; they couldn't stay away from him and he couldn't stay away from them. A kiss was never enough anymore, from any of them, but everything else they would give him came so easily at the touch of his hand that such things held no savor, either.

He would leave dark bruises on Anthy's skin and weep over them in the mornings.

The forest surrounding the arena was coming along nicely, the heavy European trees bearing up well under the weight of the rose vines. Anthy had such a gift for gardening; perfect for a princess-to-be.

"Soon," he whispered in her ear as they lay together under false and hateful stars, "soon you will be a princess. I'll change the world to make it so, and you will never suffer again..."

But beneath him she turned her face away and said nothing.

Akio ran his fingers along her cheek, her lips, the sharp line of her jaw and the softness of her neck. "My poor sister," he said, in his softest voice, "are you frightened? Oh, I understand - it is a terrifying thing to be a princess without a prince. There are so many monsters worse than I that will hunger for your flesh, so many beastly men who will have no regard for your tender feelings, and there will be no one to save you, at first. Anthy, Anthy, don't be afraid, when your prince arrives it will all be worth it..."

"I won't be afraid, brother," she said.

"You are such a good girl, Anthy," Akio said, and kissed her. "You will become a princess in no time at all."

_Are you all right with that, brother?_

A (slut) princess (slut) is (slut) a (slut) girl (slut) who (slut) is (slut) waiting (slut) for (slut) her (slut) prince.

-(a budding rose)-

Once upon a time there was a sister who did _not_ say to her brother,

"You are a monster who will never be a prince again.  
"You are a devil.  
"You are a beast with a rotten beauty."

But what she did say, through a veil of other words, was this:

"I never needed a prince to save me. You didn't need to make me a princess."

"I don't understand," said the man who had once been a prince.

"I hope that you will, someday," the girl said, and she walked away.

Really, her brother was so very silly.

-(a rose in bloom)-

"Hey, so... after all that, what do you think about princes and princesses now?"

**Princes** are children who think they can save the world with a toy sword.  
**Princesses** are little children who don't know they are allowed to save themselves.

"I don't really think about them at all," Anthy says, and twines her fingers with Utena's as their hair flows together on the bed.


End file.
